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IV. D. HAROLD BLUM: REVISED FEMALE DEVELOPMENT WITH THE IMPLICATIONS FOR DRIVE AND LIBIDO THEORY One of those who organizationally and conceptually contributed to the modifications of the psychoanalytic theory of female development with implication for drive theory, Blum, as the Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association, reflected on special supplemental volumes (Blum and Galenson 1978; Blum 1996), with invited authors like Eleanor Galenson and Herman Roiphe , Samuel Ritvo , Gertrude Ticho, Harold Blum, Judith Kestenberg, Henri Parens, Selma Kramer, Nancy Chodorow, Rosemary Balsam, Phyllis Tyson, Nancy Kulish and Deanna Holtzman, Anni Bergman and others, summarizing some of the following changes: A phallocentric bias in which mothers were eclipsed by fathers and in which female genitals were devalued has been contested. The female superego was no longer regarded as weaker or deficient, and sex differences in structure and function are not given value judgments. Libido was not only and primarily masculine, neither were passivity, narcissism, and masochism regarded as essentially feminine traits. Neither masochism nor envy was confined to women or necessarily related to the absence of a penis. Envy was acknowledged as an important affect with many sources and sequalae in both sexes. Both little boys and girls envy each other and grownups. Penis envy has been variously conceptualized as a reaction to castration fantasy, as a developmental organizer for the girl’s masculinity, as a disguise for other losses and disappointments, as a metaphor for a wide variety of additional infantile wishes, and as a means to both possess mother and separate-individuate from mother. Penis envy was acknowledged as a complex compromise formation which represented all of the above, as well as overdetermined envy of the male. The phallic woman fantasy of both sexes is an important universal fantasy and represents bisexuality as a composite of the parental couple. The fantasy that the girl has “nothing” and that “nothing” refers to the female genital is an infantile misconception and not a reality. Femininity was now acknowledged as primary because of a girl’s biological endowment, and the primary experience of her own body. Appropriate labeling, parental discrimination of the infant as a girl, and response by the parents to a daughter which supports and complements her innate disposition appear to be critically important in feminine development. Parental fantasy, attitude, and behavior can apparently override innate endowment and disposition in vulnerable infants. The historical (his-story), cultural, social, and linguistic representations of and attitudes toward women are internalized and reciprocally influence unconscious fantasy in a circular process. Coincident with mother—infant studies, the psychology of women was hereby radically revised. Femininity and gender were reappraised, with transformation of previous theory concerning feminine masochism and penis envy. Female analysts importantly advanced child analysis, and contributed long overdue analytic studies of pregnancy. In this context, four types of aggression for both boys and girls have been identified by Henri Parens et al. (1994): nonhostile-destructive (eating); nonhostile-nondestructive (constructive criticism, accomplishing something); hostile-nondestructive (blaming a culprit,
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